One of 2 daughters of a mechanical engineer and a designer for Vogue, Hilde Kuklak Kuberg grew up in Germany with a love for perfectionism, a strong work ethic, and skills as a seamstress, needle artist and cook. Kuberg, who died in Huntsville, Ala., at 91 on June 24, 2014, oriented her own life around caring for her husband, children and home. (Courtesy/Kuberg family)

HUNTSVILLE, Alabama – The heart of the story of Hilde Helene Kuklak Kuberg's life centered on her husband, her children, her home and her faith. That is the heart, but there is so much more that will likely never be known about her 91 years, which ended in Huntsville, Ala., on June 24, 2014.

Kuberg was born in Germany in 1923. Her father was a mechanical engineer and her mother was a designer for Vogue. Kuberg grew up in Gelsenkirchen, dressed impeccably in clothes that were hand-tailored – first by her mother and then by herself. She expected perfection of herself during an age when the German people as a whole were striving for perfection.

The age passed, but Hilde Kuberg's perfectionism never flagged. As a mother herself, her house was scoured every single day. Every meal was perfect, and the aroma of her fresh sour-dough bread filled the rooms at least once a week. Her hobby of needlework, from design to embroidery to tatting, produced intricate works of art. Every evening when her husband returned from work, his casual clothes were laid out for him to change into, and a hot meal was on the table.

Obviously bright, would she have gone to college had it not been the war years in Germany? Kuberg herself never discussed the what-ifs of her life in the four-page autobiography she wrote in 1996. She wrote the paper for a class of the adult extension classes at the University of Alabama in Huntsville, where she also took classes in history and physics after her husband's death in 1994. Mirroring the focus of her life, two of those four pages shift away from her own experiences to her children's accomplishments. But she was satisfied with that.

"If I had my life to live over," Hilde Kuberg said a day before she died, surrounded by family, "I'd do it all the same."

Hilde Kuberg kisses her first-born son, Dieter. Hilde and Willi Kuberg remember their first few years of marriage, when they lived in a Baltic Sea-side city while Willi worked with Wernher Von Braun at Peenemunde, as some of their happiest years. Surrounded by family, Hilde Kuberg, 91, died in Huntsville, Ala., on June 24, 2014. (Courtesy/Kuberg family)

Wartime love

At 19, Hilde Kuberg married an intensely intelligent young soldier, Willi Kuberg. In 1942, he was transferred with other scientists to Wernher Von Braun's Peenemunde missile project, where Hilde was able to work in the office. Her autobiography recalls their time in Zinnowitz as a beautiful idyll by the Baltic Sea.

"We were young and in love and happy to be together," Hilde writes. "Life was perfect."

Willi told his children a little of the underside of that "perfect" time, of how he was appalled by how Hitler was treating people. But both he and Hilde came of a generation that kept ugly memories to themselves. Hilde's autobiography also doesn't mention what had to have been wartime privations, even for a scientist's, family, or how much they left behind in Zinnowitz when they fled in 1945, just ahead of the invading Russian army.

"My parents started all over, with nothing, three times," said Christel Kuberg Dunn, the third of the Kubergs' four children. "But I never heard her complain."

Hilde Kuberg helps her son, Harry, the youngest of four children, steady himself during a family trip to the Smoky Mountains about 59 years ago. Willi and Hilde loved to take their children to the mountains or to the Florida coast during the vacation time he had as a member of the Von Braun rocket team. The only member of the family born in the U.S., Harry loved to remind his siblings that only he was eligible to become president (although he became a physician, instead). Surrounded by family, Kuberg, 91, died in Huntsville, Ala., on June 24, 2014. (Courtesy/Kuberg family)

Coming to America

In 1952, Willi Kuberg was recruited to join the rocket team in the U.S. It was a bittersweet opportunity – they left behind their families, their homeland, their friends. They boarded the ship with little more than they could carry. By the time they arrived in New York, where they had to wait three days until their train left for Huntsville, they were nearly out of money.

"I can reflect back on our major decision of what to feed our family," Hilde writes in her autobiography in some of the few lines where her German-accented English can be overheard. "Our finances were low."

The most food for the least money? A bag of bananas -- which became breakfast, lunch, supper for three days. But the bland meals came with a fortifying garnish.

"We were filled with so much emotion and excitement of new opportunities," Hilde writes. "We felt blessed just to be here and together as a family."

Christel Dunn and her sister, Inge Zanaty, say that they and their two brothers gradually realized the sacrifice their parents had made in moving to the U.S. so that they could have a good future. And while Willi's work in Huntsville meant that the family was immediately folded into the warm community of the other rocket scientists' families, it came with the chronic pain of missing those back home.

Neither Hilde nor Willi were ever able to return to Germany to see their family there. They spent their lives making sure they made a good life possible for their children -- a goal they accomplished.

"Their dream came true," Dunn said. "They came to American so their children would prosper – and they all did. They accomplished the goals they had set out to do."

We welcome your suggestions for Life Stories about people from North Alabama, recently deceased, who lived an extraordinary life. Send suggestions to HsvNewsroom@AL.com or 256-532-4320.